Hermione's Friday
by musefan929
Summary: "Her hair was a wild masterpiece of tendrils and her knee was primed to ram him in the testicles if needed. Instead, to her surprise, he asked one simple question." Hermione/Ron/Draco. Office drama/comedy. One-shot. Rated for highly suggestive themes.


Hermione rubbed her temples and let out a long sigh. With a rattle, the lift slid to a grinding stop and its doors opened. She stepped in, setting down her briefcase. With a buzz, the lift snapped closed and she rose upwards.

At the next level, the cool female voice announced that it was the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Straightening her back, she watched as the doors slid open. In front of her was Ron, staring at her momentarily before flicking his eyes away.

"Hey," he muttered, sidling in next to her.

"Hey," Hermione responded. After a long moment, she closed her eyes and asked, "So how's work been?"

To her surprise, Ron answered immediately, "About as well as you'd expect. Shacklebolt's got us working in twenty-four shifts now. I'm just running back to my flat for some clothes before my lunch is over."

"What?" Hermione asked, turning to meet his eyes. She noticed, upon a closer examination, that dark bags were weighing down his once sparkling brown eyes. His skin was gaunt and he was balling his right fist unnaturally, even awkwardly, behind him.

"Ronald, when are you getting any sleep?"

Ron snorted, "I'm sure Harry's told you."

"Told me what?" Hermione asked.

"You mean you haven't sent him an owl?"

"Don't you think I've tried?" Hermione asked, slapping a hand to her forehead, "You know what? I'm sorry. It was just- well- today was-"

"I know," Ron said quietly, hanging his head down, "and I'm sorry for not calling."

"Just one phone call, Ron. That's all I wanted."

"I know."

The lift doors opened and four other passengers squeezed in. It forced Hermione closer to Ron and he overcompensated for the restriction in space, balling himself into the corner. The way he had jerked away from her so quickly, as if her touch were acidic, hurt her more than she thought it would. They spent the rest of the ride up in silence as the rest of the passengers murmured and deposited themselves in ones and twos on different levels.

Eventually, just before their last stop, Hermione looked down at his right fist again. She saw dark red marks and a neat bandage wrapped around his palm. She wanted to say something, but felt herself go numb. Why had she not been privy to this? Did he really think so little of her now?

"It was a cooking accident, in case you were wondering," Ron whispered almost imperceptibly.

"So now you cook?" Hermione asked in a surprisingly offended tone.

"Yes, now I cook. I've even gotten a little good at it. I cook for people when they come over to my flat."

Hermione looked away. A tear had formed in the corner of her eye and she refused to let him see. She closed her eyes and took a steady breath.

"Hermione, we said," Ron took her hand. His touch, so damningly familiar, burned her, "'Mione, we said that-"

"Don't you _dare _call me that, Ronald," Hermione snarled in a low voice.

The lift doors opened to the main entrance of the Ministry of Magic.

"And have a lovely evening," the cool female voice announced.

Hermione snapped her head up and strode furiously out of the lift, shoving her tears away with the back of her hand and growling in anger. Suddenly, she remembered her briefcase and ran back to the lift, her cheeks burning with humiliation.

"I have it here," Ron said bleakly, standing outside the elevator.

"Give it, then," Hermione said, snatching the briefcase from him, avoiding his eyes.

"Look! Will you just look, okay?" Ron grumbled.

"Look at what?" Hermione answered, her whole body trembling in rage.

"You said we had to find our own things. And I found mine," Ron said, pointing to his heaving chest, "So you can't get mad when I tell you when I see other people."

"I'm not mad, Ronald! I just don't know what to do with myself when I hear you say that and I feel like the world's biggest jerk but I can't help it, okay?"

Ron stepped back, "I'm not seeing anyone, if that's what you're asking."

Hermione stamped her foot, "That's not even the point! The point is you're off having a life, off doing things I don't get to know about because we're not even friends anymore."

Ron stepped in front of a fireplace and said, "I know we both wanted to do the friends thing for Harry's sake, but now he's off on his assignment in Romania. It just doesn't work without him, you said so yourself. What am I supposed to do for you?"

"You should go, Ron," Hermione whispered, her throat aching in pain, "Please. I'm sorry for ruining your night."

"Happy Friday, yeah?" Ron said before the floo powder engulfed him in green flames.

* * *

Hermione walked the three blocks to her flat in the pouring rain. It was dark outside and the headlights from passing cars threw long strange shadows against mailboxes and closed shops. Weaving her way to her apartment, she climbed up the soggy wooden staircase and fought with the door handle until it opened.

Her apartment was dark. Struggling for the light, she flicked the switch but nothing turned on.

"Light's out," Draco said in the darkness.

Hermione illuminated her wand, casting a spell that ignited several small candles throughout her flat. This had not been the first time a storm had knocked out the power. Draco sat on her leather couch, mixing a cocktail with a spoon.

"Took the liberty of using the last of your limoncello. The limes, however, were mine. I call it, 'The Dramione'."

"That has to be the stupidest name I've ever heard," Hermione said, dropping her briefcase on the ground.

"Oh, now," Draco said, rolling his tongue in his cheek, "someone's a bit wound up, aren't they?"

"What part of this- this _arrangement_ ever screamed 'portmanteau' to you, Draco?" Hermione asked, shrugging off her coat and hanging it on the rack.

Draco sniffed, drumming his long fingers on the couch, "There's a new word for you. 'Portmaneau'. Reminds me of that bloody difficult Muggle's chess you've got in your closet. You positively ooze brainy and it's a bit repulsive. Always need to make myself something stiff when I get here just to bear it."

Hermione watched as Draco tilted his head back, taking a generous pull on the cocktail.

"Which brings us to a rather valid conversational topic," Hermione said as she unclasped her earrings and set them down on a dish by the door, "can you stop treating my apartment like an open bar at a ruddy Pure-Blood-Incest convention?"

"How'd you find out about those conventions?" Draco said, raising a clumsy eyebrow, "is your little ex-lover on some sort of secret investigation? Because I've already booked 'The Warlock's Hairy Heart' and if I have to tell them that-"

Draco was smacked unexpectedly on the face with a throw pillow. His drink sloshed slightly onto his black fitted suit.

"Don't get into that _ex-lover _business again. You know it's rude," Hermione spat, removing the hair clip that had held her hair in a high bun.

"Can you mind the beverage? This suit was worth more than a gentleman could care to divulge from Borgin and Burke's."

"Borgin's? What? Does this suit come with some sort of dark arts power that tricks women into thinking you're mildly interesting? " Hermione asked, a hand on her hip.

Draco straightened his suit, "For your information, they are also a high quality clothier. My father swears by them. Shit! I mean-"

"Nope, you said the 'f' word, you know what that means!" Hermione said, wagging her finger and using her wand to float a small tin Gringotts bank towards Draco.

Draco sighed, pulling out his emerald wallet, "Aren't we a little more adult than this?"

"We agreed. A sickle for every use of the word 'father'. A galleon for every feeble attempt to hit on me."

"Which I have since abandoned, Mother Granger," Draco said with a smile, depositing a sickle into the bank, "I swear on my life, I have learned the errors of my ways and promise henceforth to be a most dutiful fuck buddy."

Hermione winced, that term made her skin crawl. She sighed, "Honestly, I can't wait to spend that money on something that can satisfy me without the ribald commentary."

Hermione sat next to him on the couch and gave a long sigh. Of course, this was definitely the worst decision she had made post-Ron. Really, just a horrendous, misguided, absolutely bound for disaster plan. She had not told anyone about him, not even Ginny. It had started just about as idiotic as it evidently continued to be. Grabbing the cocktail from Draco's hands, she took a sip and remembered how it started.

A few weeks after the break-up, she was about to go home for the night, flicking off the lights in her office. But something had stuck to her heel. Looking down, she saw that it was a poster of the new class of Aurors. Staring at her brightly, with one arm around Harry and the other around an obscenely beautiful young woman was Ron. A lot of things happened at once. She shredded the poster and in her fit, she had spilled a mug, which she kicked, causing a framed picture to fall, crashing into a bookshelf, which fell and cracked a table neatly in two, throwing a table leg at her knee. She moaned like a wounded beast and in a second fit of rage, turned to the wall to quite possibly knock a hole into it, when her arm was seized by Draco. He had run over to see about the noise. Her chest was heaving, her hair was a wild masterpiece of tendrils and her knee was primed to ram him in the testicles if needed. Instead, to her surprise, he asked one simple question.

"You feel like fucking?"

Her lips and hips slamming him into the wall and his subsequent use of half a table was a succinct answer.

But now, as she looked at Draco, she wondered what this meant to her now. She was Hermione, a witch of high caliber and a woman of discerning taste. She had a moderately impressive career at both Hogwarts and now at the Ministry. Couldn't she do better than a sniveling Slytherin twerp?

"You've got something in your eyes," Draco said, leaning closer with his hand.

Hermione scrunched her nose and brushed him away. When she gave this a_greement_ any thought, his touch became repulsive. It was becoming more difficult to ignore that feeling within her. Maybe, as she had reckoned at the beginning, she could crawl into an abyss so dark, no one could recognize her. Maybe, her logic had run, she had held too much sense of duty to her friends and principles. What had any of it gotten her beyond a messy relationship, a stint in the tabloids, and a dusty medal of valor? Wasn't it time to take pleasure for herself, just like Ginny back at Hogwarts?

"What is it?" Draco asked

Hermione stood up, "I'm afraid you'll have to leave."

Surely, Ginny would have understood her situation. She often talked about a boy here and there and now Hermione knew what she had been missing. In a brain packed with anxieties and rules, there was something rather thrilling about ditching it all for a hasty lunch-hour pick-me-up in the forgotten basement lavatories. But something had happened. The hands, the lips, the tongue- they all belonged to someone. This particular someone was more than adept at compartmentalization, hasty conveniences, and bitter justifications. Draco was not a good man. And this no longer worked for her.

"Oh, I get it," Draco said, standing up, "Mudblood's got some notion of dignity all of a sudden. You'd-"

"Don't," Hermione interrupted, her voice louder than she expected. She wanted to slap him, to curse him, to turn him into a Niffler which would be a rather fitting demise for a wizard already so attracted to treasure.

"Don't do this. At least have some sense to leave before you make a scene," she said.

Draco straightened up his suit, adjusting his tie, "Right. Well I've got other places to go, you know. I can get ass when I need it."

"And I'm so proud of you," Hermione said, narrowing her eyebrows, "because that's all I was, right?"

"You want me to answer that or not?" Draco seethed, flipping on his winter coat.

Hermione held out his hat to him. As he made to grab it, she viciously yanked him close and whispered, "You tell anyone and there'll be no end to your suffering. I hope this makes sense to you."

Draco's eyes widened in fright momentarily, but his cool composure hastily re-assembled itself. His eyes flicked away from her ferocity. He blinked and cleared his throat. With a snarl, he swiped the hat from her hands. A brief burst of cold smacked Hermione as he left, but as the door closed, she breathed shakily but deeply.


End file.
